“Not me. I didn’t choose any of this, and neither did my mother,” she spits back.
Marsha told her more than I anticipated. Interesting.
“What else did she tell you?” I ask.
She looks like she’s about to break. “My father … Is it the president?”
I hesitate to tell her. I wish it wasn’t true, wish I could erase his mere existence from her mind. But I nod instead.
She sinks to the floor. “No, no, no, no, no!”
She covers her face with her hands and buries herself in the remainder of her dress. “No, not him, anyone but him.”
“It’s the truth, Natalie. He’s your father, whether you want it to be true or not.”
“I’m nothing like him, nothing!” she yells, looking up at me with eyes that almost spit fire.
“You can want that to be true, but you are his daughter, and you were born here.”
“So what? That doesn’t mean I belong here,” she claps back.
“We’re betrothed. You’re my wife. You belong here now more than ever,” I reply.
“This community is wrong, and the Family is vicious. I want no part in it,” she says, averting her eyes.
I come closer and go to my knees in front of her, and I grab her face. “You know what I see when I look at you? Your mother. Not your father.” When I say this, her face lights up just a tiny bit. “I see the same free spirit, the same tenacity, the same will. And I see potential.”
She shakes me off. “All you see is a birthing machine.”
“That’s what you tell yourself so you can keep living your fantasy of escaping this place,” I say. “It’s not happening, Natalie. You’re my wife now, and with my guidance, you’ll become a queen. You were born for this.”
“No,” she says, shaking her head. “I don’t want any of this. I never asked for this.”
“We don’t always decide our own fate, Natalie,” I say.
“All I wanted was to find my mother. That’s it. I recognized your tattoo from my scarf because it was her scarf. Because she draped it around my neck the day she pushed me to that hut where you were preparing that giant suitcase. She saved me. Not you,” she spits.
“It was my idea, my plan, and I was the one who gave you the freedom,” I say. “But I can take it away again all the same.”
“You already did,” she hisses back, and she stomps off out of her room.
I contemplate following her, but I doubt I can reason with her right now. She’s upset and rightfully so. What she just found out would shake me to my core too if I was in her shoes. I thought the least she would do was to try to kill me, but maybe I misjudged her hatred for me. Maybe she’s more attached to me than I thought … and that’s killing her now.
I groan to myself and rub my forehead, trying to wrap my head around all of this. I never intended for her to find out that the president is her father this soon. If she goes to talk to him, all my plans could be foiled, especially if he sides with her over me. I have to make sure that doesn’t happen.
She has to get on my side; it’s the only way to make this work. And there’s only one road to conquering Natalie’s heart … Her mother.
I immediately waltz to Marsha’s room and burst in uninvited.
“You son of a bitch.”
My sudden entrance doesn’t go unnoticed. Good. “We had an agreement. You knew everything that would happen, and you didn’t fucking commit!”
She stares at me with a sour look on her face. “I changed my fucking mind.”
I normally never swear, and neither does she, but for this occasion, we’re making an exception. It’s worth it.
She marches straight for me and pushes my chest. “This place is no good for her, and you know it. How could you bring her back here?”
“This was our deal,” I say. “You knew the minute you surrendered her to me that this was going to happen.”
She folds her arms. “I thought things would be different by now.” Her face darkens. “I would rather burn in hell than let you keep her here.”
After all these years, this is how she still views us.
Even when she herself fell for the president’s charms when he took her a long time ago, she’d still berate us for trying to do the same.
“Change takes time,” I hiss back. “You intervened. You talked with her without my permission. You put everything I hope to achieve at risk.”
“Permission to talk to my daughter? From you?” she scoffs. “You have balls, Noah.”
“A deal is a deal, Marsha,” I say through gritted teeth. “You can’t just go back on your end.”
“I don’t believe you anymore,” she says. “My daughter was innocent, and you brought her into a world she’s not prepared for. Nothing will ever change.”